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Cross-Cultural Aspects of Environmental Design

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Book cover Environment and Culture

Part of the book series: Human Behavior and Environment ((HUBE,volume 4))

Abstract

In considering the relationship between culture and environmental design this chapter will suggest that these two are intimately related and that cultural differences must be considered in tracing environmental effects and in stating design requirements. Since culture is variable, designed environments respond to variable definitions of needs and priorities as expressed in varying schemata: environments are culture specific. In being so they are congruent with specific life-styles. For one thing, both designs and life-styles can be seen as resulting from sets of choices among many alternatives which even the most severe constraints make possible. These choices reflect certain ideal images and schemata, i.e., both environments and life-styles are shaped by cultural “templates.” At smaller scales this process results in sets of cues which are encoded in the environment and help guide behavior. In order to be useful cues need to be decoded—if they cannot be decoded, then environments are effectively meaningless—another reason for the culture specific nature of environments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Architecture, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 53201, USA

    Amos Rapoport

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  1. Amos Rapoport
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

    Irwin Altman

  2. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

    Amos Rapoport

  3. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Joachim F. Wohlwill

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Rapoport, A. (1980). Cross-Cultural Aspects of Environmental Design. In: Altman, I., Rapoport, A., Wohlwill, J.F. (eds) Environment and Culture. Human Behavior and Environment, vol 4. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0451-5_2

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